Dear all Speaking from a personal point of view as the guy who founded the project, registered the domains and trademarks and all that...
I can make absolutely clear I handed off all ownership of the domains and trademarks to the foundation. I would invite others to do the same for the local openstreetmap domains. Because of the xmas break and so on the treasurer and secretary may not have had the time to fill in all the paperwork just yet, but I've instructed, last month in fact, the registration firm I used to deal now only with them. Peter of course knows all of this because he's been repeatedly bombarding board and team members with threatening emails. It's unfortunate that his core, often valid, concerns and objections are so often overtaken by personal attacks and bridge burning exercises. Peter, in trying to apply all these different pressure points on board and team members I can assure you that you are achieving the opposite of your aims. I would invite you, again, to address issues to the secretary of the OSMF and also have patience that we are volunteers. I believe we could build a more positive relationship if you did this. Much as Grant was also very worried about the trade marks, it is sometimes easy to feel isolated and that conspiracies exist or that the OSMF board members are not acting in good faith. I have deep respect for the team and the board and I feel that if you did too we could work better toward making OSM even more successful. Best Steve On 19 Jan 2009, at 12:43, Peter Miller wrote: > > I checked on the Intellectual Property Office's website over the > weekend and discovered that the trademark applications previously > discussed on this list were still in SteveC's personal name. This > concerned me as the final date on which objections could be lodged for > one of them was the 21st Jan. We checked with the UK IPO today by > phone and confirmed that no transfer forms had been received and I > lodged an objection. This gives the foundation a further month to make > the transfer. > > In order to track these trademark applications, and possibly others in > the future, I have created a new wiki page for trademarks. I have also > added a short cautionary section to the page explaining why it is a > bad idea for an individual to own a trademark for an open source > project. > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Trademark > > I have exchanged a number of emails with the foundation over the past > month on this matter about some changes that have been made since the > board meeting however I fail to see how what has been done protects > the project. I would invite SteveC or Andy to explain on this list > what exactly has changed since then and why we should not be worried. > > > Regards, > > > Peter Miller > > > _______________________________________________ > legal-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk > _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
